Chapter 2

From the bedroom came the sound of things being thrown, and my granddaughter crying, low and swallowed.

I leaned against the door outside it, forehead pressed to the cold wood panel, shaking all over.

The moment I shut my eyes, I saw her again: covered in blood, lying in the back of the ambulance.

She didn't know that in the last second inside the incinerator, what I thought about wasn't my own pain. It was what would become of her, for the rest of her life.

I couldn't tell her I'd been reborn.

She'd only think my mind had broken.

I clutched the phone like the last straw between her and drowning.

As long as it stayed with me, she couldn't call a ride, couldn't find the way, couldn't get out that door.

The screen lit up.

Patsy had sent another message:

"Star, forget it, don't put yourself in a hard spot."

"I know your grandmother means well."

"I just feel so awful inside… I was scared that if I got drunk there'd be no one to take me home. Forget it… I'll just sit here by myself for a while."

I sneered.

Drunk? A pregnant woman? How could she possibly be drinking?

Patsy's pregnancy was something that only came out in my last life, when the police investigated.

Unmarried and pregnant, she'd been squeezed by the man's family over the bride price, ground down from eighty thousand to twenty. They wanted her to sign a prenup, and the wedding wouldn't happen until the baby was born and passed a paternity test.

Furious, she'd gone to a bar, drunk juice, taken photos, and posted them online to spite her boyfriend.

Then she pinned it all on Star.

"Star said a three-legged toad is hard to find, but two-legged men are everywhere."

"She said she'd set me up with some rich heir!"

The man had a violent temper to begin with. Hearing that, he simply lost it.

When he went to the bar and started stabbing, Patsy was sitting right there in the next booth, filming.

She watched Star go down, all innocence on her face. "Are you crazy? I was only talking!"

Then she put the video online.

Caption: "My best friend dragged me to a bar to order male hosts, my ex took revenge, and she made me drink while I was pregnant."

Strangers online said Star had it coming.

With a tube down her throat, Star couldn't say a single word in her own defense.

The phone buzzed again. A notice that the messaging account had been logged in on a computer.

I whipped my head around.

The bedroom door had opened a crack, and my granddaughter came out with red-rimmed eyes, a fifty and a few loose bills clutched in her hand.

Her voice was badly hoarse.

"Patsy says she's out there crying all alone."

"Her parents are in another state, her boyfriend just dumped her, she doesn't even have anywhere to go. I'll just see her home and come right back."

"She's lying to you." It came out before I could stop it.

My granddaughter froze.

"She wasn't dumped at all. She's preg—"

I slammed to a halt.

I couldn't say it.

If I said Patsy was hiding a pregnancy, she'd only take it as some excuse I'd invented to keep her from going out.

But watching her already lace up those canvas shoes, my heart felt like a fist had closed hard around it.

In the last life she'd walked out the door in those same shoes.

When the ER nurse cut the laces open, they were soaked through with blood.

"Do you hate Patsy that much?" The tears struck down her face. "Grandma, do you think that too? That because she didn't get into a good school she's not fit to be my friend? When did you turn this snobbish?"

I opened my mouth, and my throat felt filled with lead.

Let her misunderstand, then. In this life, all I want is for my granddaughter to live, and to live well.

"If you dare walk out that door tonight," I said, my voice calm, "I'll jump from the fifth floor."

Her pupils shrank all at once.

I walked back to the living room window and pushed it open.

The wind on the fifth floor poured in, blowing my white hair wild around my head.

"Grandma!" she screamed.

She rushed over and threw her arms around my waist, sobbing so hard her whole body shook.

"I won't go, all right? I won't go!"